Boca Juniors president Juan Roman Riquelme has been accused of a ‘contradiction’ after he moved to sign a player via his release clause, after criticising Valentin Barco for doing the same to join Brighton & Hove Albion.
TNT Sports cover the Boca president today and how he is contradicting himself after he harshly criticised Barco last month.
Riquelme went ‘all out’ against Valentin Barco at the end of last month, criticising the defender after he made use of a release clause in his contract to join Brighton.
“For me, what the boy did is very wrong. When one terminates the contract, the one who signs the paper is the player. The decision is the player’s,” he said.
“He did well here and they came looking for him a lot of times, and I always said no. We offered to renew for four years and the representative wanted to renew for one. A few days later he presented the offer and left. It’s that simple,” he added, insinuating the player had used underhand tactics to get his move to the Premier League.
He was particularly unimpressed by the use of his release clause, with the general sentiment in Argentina that Boca had made nowhere near as much as they should have from the sale.
He seemed to think release clauses weren’t fair, but TNT now report that he’s set to sign Carlos Palacios from Colo Colo using the exact same mechanism.
They call out Riquelme, saying that while his annoyance over what happened with Barco and Brighton was justified, signing Palacios in this way is a ‘strong contradiction’ of what he previously said.
